Society for Science & the Public (SSP) announced today that 15 Harker seniors were named semifinalists in the 2015 Intel Science Talent Search, more than any other school in the country. In 2012, Harker had a record 11 semifinalists, so this year represents a new high watermark!
“Inquiry, curiosity and persistence embody the culture of The Harker School,” said Anita Chetty, science department chair. “The development of scientific thinking and effective communication of discoveries is part of instruction in all of the subjects we teach. This is a significant achievement for our school, yet it is a natural outcome of the daily work of our dedicated preschool-through-grade 12 faculty and our outstanding students. When I think of the diversity of research questions that our students posed and the significance of their findings, I am left with so much hope that our next generation will find solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.”
More than 1,800 students from 460 high schools entered this year’s Intel Science Talent Search; from those entrants, 300 semifinalists were selected. Each semifinalist will receive a $1,000 cash prize and is eligible to become a finalist in this year’s contest. An additional $1,000 is awarded to each semifinalist’s school. Finalists receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the final stage of the competition, where more than $1 million in prizes will be awarded. SSP will announce the 40 national finalists in this year’s competition on Jan. 21.
This year’s semifinalists and their project titles are:
Shikhar Dixit (“Immunomodulation by Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cell Line ARPE-19”)
Andrew Jin (“A Machine Learning Framework to Identify Selected Variants in Regions of Recent Adaptation”)
Rohith Kuditipudi (“Bayesian Time Series Analysis of Liver Disease Progression”)
David Lin (“Characterizing Gravitationally Bound Halo Structures in Cosmological Dark Matter Simulations”)
Cindy Liu (“Characterizing Novel Binders as Tools for Understanding Chloride Transport Mechanisms”)
Neil Movva (“How do Teeth Grow? Characterizing the Morphogenesis of the Periodontal Ligament through Complementary Biomechanical and Histological Analysis”)
Pranav Reddy (“Differential Motif Discovery to Isolate Associated Sequences and Relevant Transcription Factors for Alzheimer’s in a Mouse Model”)
Anokhi Saklecha (“The Utilization of RGD-coated Gold Nanoprisms and Optical Coherence Tomography to Target alphavbeta3 integrin: A Novel Method to Detect Circulating Tumor Cells”)
Nikash Shankar (“A Potential Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease: Encapsulation of Curcumin within Polymeric PLGA-PEG Nanoparticles Protects Neuro2A Cells from Beta-Amyloid Induced Cytotoxicity and Improves Bioavailability”)
Sriram Somasundaram (“A Novel Design and Evaluation of Chitosan Nanoparticle Ocular Drug Delivery System Using Protein-Ligand Docking Simulations and pH Dependent Corneal Permeation”)
Kailas Vodrahalli (“Transporting Solar Energy Through Optical Waveguides for Concentrated Solar Power Applications”)
Steven Wang (“Computer-Aided Genomic Characterization of Colorectal Cancer Driver Genes for Oncogenic Transformation of Primary Colon Organoids”)
Menghua Wu (“Characteristics of Drug Combination Therapy in Oncology by Analyzing Clinical Trial Data on ClinicalTrials.gov”)
Leo Yu (“A Novel Algorithm to Unify CMIP5 Ensemble Climate Models for Optimal Climate Projections”)
Andrew Zhang (“The Dearth of Lithium-Rich Stars in Globular Clusters”)
The Science Talent Search, launched by SSP in 1942 in a partnership with Westinghouse, has since become one of the country’s most respected science contests for high school seniors. It has been sponsored by Intel since 1998. Congratulations to students, mentors and teachers, and good luck in the next round!
This story is a continuation of “Harker Research: Profiles in Perseverance,” a story that appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly highlighting scientific research being performed by Harker students. Read on to find out more about these students’ fascinating projects and exciting discoveries!
Shikhar Dixit, Grade 12
Shikhar Dixit’s interest in STEM research led him to perform pharmaceutical research at biotech company Cellworks last year. He later discovered that he enjoyed immunology. “I find immunology intriguing because of the interesting intricacies involved,” he said. “When reading research about how the immune system relates to the eye, I became even more interested in pursuing this project.”
For his project, “Immunomodulation by Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cell Line ARPE-19,” Dixit was mentored by Dr. Andrew W. Taylor at Boston University Medical Center. “My experience … in the lab environment dealing with fascinating lab equipment and cell cultures while interacting with many Ph.D. and medical students has been the most exciting part of the research,” he said.
Over the course of his research, Dixit found that “there are specific tissues in the body such as the eyes, brain, central nervous system and testes that suppress inflammation in a phenomenon known as immune privilege.”
Matthew Huang, Grade 12
Matthew Huang’s “interest and passion in physics” led him to his research project of quarks and gluons. “I’ve always had a curiosity for how the universe worked at a fundamental level, and researching about quarks and gluons is the perfect subject,” he said.
His project, “Quarks and Gluons in Spacetime: BiCGSTAB Implementation of Lattice QCD on Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor,” sought to find “a more efficient way to carry out lattice QCD processes, which determine the interactions between quarks and gluons.” One of the most fascinating things he learned was that “you can never separate a pair of quarks, no matter how much energy you put in. Empty space is not actually empty, but filled with oscillating energy fields comprised of gluons.”
Huang’s mentor, William Detmold of MIT, “guided me throughout the entire project and remained supportive through difficulties.”
Leeza Kuo, Grade 12
Leeza Kuo, grade 12, chose stem cells as the subject of her research project, “Embryonic stem cell markers KLf4 and SSEA1 expressed as a result of acute-liver damage,” because of the possible health benefits they offer. “I love to help others and researching stem cells could lead to new regenerative health procedures that could help many people,” she said. “Stem cells are very popular field of research today partially because of the potential it could have on regenerative medicine.”
Being in the research program at Harker afforded Kuo opportunities she may not have had otherwise. “Thanks to [Harker’s] strong science program, I was able to complete my research project using methods including electrophoresis and polymerase chain reaction that are not readily available at most other schools,” she noted.
The extra help sessions she attended at school also helped her understand material more clearly, as it allowed her to review topics with her teachers and ask more pointed questions. “Harker teachers are always extremely supportive and encouraging in their student’s work because of the small faculty to student ratio,” Kuo said. “All my teachers know me by name along with my personality and character.”
What excited Kuo most about her research was the implications it may have for changing how – and how long – people live: “Induced pluripotent stem cells could be the key to reversing aging and repairing genetic mutations by implanting new tissues, becoming the non-fictional fountain of youth.”
Ankita Pannu, Grade 12
Ankita Pannu’s project, “Mining online cancer support groups: improving healthcare through social data,” was special to her for a variety of reasons, but one stands out. “I wanted to do this project after a member in my family was diagnosed with thyroid cancer,” she recalled. “I spent a lot of time in thyroid cancer support groups and I realized that they are really hard to navigate, so I decided to use my knowledge of computer science to solve this problem.”
Pannu’s hope was to make this particular online support group easier to navigate so that thyroid cancer patients will have an easier time finding helpful materials. “I hoped to be able to summarize and categorize threads so that users would be able to easily determine whether it would be valuable for them to read,” she said. “I also tried to find correlations between symptoms and treatments based on what people were discussing.”
In addition to having success in these areas, she said it gave her some ideas for future research she hopes to pursue. The project also gave her a chance to combine her love of computer science and linguistics into a single project.
“I have always been interested in computer science and especially the intersection of linguistics and CS to find meaning in human language,” she said. “It is so fascinating to me that computers are becoming more intelligent systems and we can use different algorithms to make sense out of natural language.”
Archana Podury, Grade 12
Hematology was new for Archana Podury, grade 12, who is working with Stanford University’s Dr. Anu Parla while researching uses for the novel drug CX-5641 for her project, “Targeting Myelodisplasia in 5q- Syndrome Using Novel Drug CX-5641.” Podury has found Dr. Narla to “incredibly helpful.
“When I was becoming familiar with the pathways and the properties of blood cells that were involved with the drug, she decided to hold weekly lectures in her office to teach me segments of confusing material and answer any questions I had.”
Shadowing Narla at a hematology clinic at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Podury had the opportunity to “meet actual patients, study patient samples and learn about blood smears. She always works to contextualize her research and works very closely with her patients, which reinforced to me that research isn’t just a distanced study that happens in a lab, it has actual application for real people.”
Under Narla’s mentorship, Podury, has been considered a real member of the team at the lab. “Since I’m still working in the lab during the school year, she organizes monthly lab meetings discussing everyone’s projects and makes sure I can make it to the meetings,” Podury said. “I’m very thankful to have had her as a mentor; she has helped me so much throughout the process.”
Podury hopes that her work at the lab will reveal that “[CX-5641] can selectively target defective 5q- cells in not just an A549 model, but also in CD34 blood cells and in patient samples. It’s a long way to go, but I’m excited to keep working.”
Because she is not yet 18, Podury is not able to work with core blood, but watching her colleagues process core blood has been one of the most exciting parts of her research. She has also been introduced to techniques that she had not been familiar with previously. “I learned about viral transfections and knocking down segments of DNA using lentivirus, which was especially interesting because we learned about lentivirus in AP Bio, but I never knew something so dangerous could be used so effectively in research,” she said.
Podury’s experience with research began in middle school through the Harker Research Club. Prior to her work at Stanford, she worked at Harker’s Open Lab. “I was able to see many sides of research that I didn’t know about before, like how important the stage of ordering materials is, how unpredictable results can be even when they’re planned very precisely, and how to analyze and respond to errors in data,” she said. “Harker lets us access so many resources, and before working in open lab, I honestly had no idea that the lab had so much high quality equipment that was available to students. It’s really a privilege.”
Sahana Rangarajan, Grade 12
“I wanted to spend my summer at a research internship to gain the experience necessary to conduct research in college,” said senior Sahana Rangarajan.
Her project, “Tracking parallel mutation trajectories conferring increased resistance to HIV-RT inhibitors,” was the result of a newfound interest in biology and programming. “Thus, bioinformatics seemed a perfect field to try research in,” she said.
The goal of the research was to improve ways of predicting how HIV develops mutations that resist drug treatment. In the process, the research team “used a new method that yielded promising results,” Rangarajan said. Interestingly, she added, “there was no lab based component, but learning about the biology behind HIV was necessary for me to understand what I was doing.”
Nikash Sankar, Grade 12
During his work as a volunteer at a dementia care facility, senior Nikash Shankar witnessed the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease firsthand, and wanted to help. “As I was investigating various herbal remedies for Alzheimer’s, I came across curcumin, a spice that is commonly used in Asian cooking,” he said. “Being familiar with the spice, I became interested in its effects on Alzheimer’s disease and possible methods of improving its efficacy.”
Researching further, Shankar discovered he could increase curcumin’s ability to reduce toxicity caused by Alzheimer’s through “encapsulation of curcumin into polymeric nanoparticles.”
Adding to the field of Alzheimer’s research was the most exciting part of his project, titled “A Potential Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease: Encapsulation of Curcumin within Polymeric PLGA-PEG Nanoparticles Protects Neuro2A cells from Beta-Amyloid Induced Cytotoxicity and Improves Bioavailability.” “Everything we find through our research (that is novel) is something that no one has ever found before and discovering or even validating a scientific finding as a high school student is a rare opportunity,” he said.
Science teachers Chris Spenner, Anita Chetty and other Harker faculty members provided helpful feedback to Sankar as he was creating his paper.
Aside from having a unique research opportunity, Shankar also had the rare chance to use a scanning electron microscope. “SEM’s are incredibly expensive and only very few exist in California,” he said.
Venkat Sankar, Grade 10
Sophomore Venkat Sankar’s interest in environmental science led him to research the environmental impact of the proposed billion-dollar Panoche Valley Solar Farm, which would be constructed in central California’s Panoche Valley if approved.
Sankar said he was “[concerned] about the potential impact of the Panoche [Valley] Solar Farm project on the rare and endangered wildlife in the area.” The main goal of his project, ‘Managing the Impact of Infrastructure Projects on Endangered Species: A Stochastic Simulation Approach Based on Population Viability Analysis,’ was to use computer simulations that would analyze available information and use it to simulate a system, in hopes of coming up with “a detailed assessments of the impact of infrastructure projects on endangered wildlife.”
He received help from middle school science teacher Daniel Sommer, who offered advice and introduced Sankar to an expert in environmental sciences. Upper school science teacher Jeff Sutton also provided input on the final paper.
“It has been validated using a real-life case study in California,” Sankar said of his project. “It is broadly applicable to a range of environmental impact studies around the world.”
Madelyn Wang, Grade 12
After taking Harker’s research methods class in grade 10, Madelyn Wang, now grade 12, became interesting in pursuing scientific research. This past summer, she enrolled at UC Davis’ Young Scholars Program , where she worked on developing a blot procedure for detecting trace amounts of protein in tissue samples with her mentor, Dr. Aldrin Gomes. “I also studied the protein expression levels of GSTM1, an antioxidant enzyme, and looked at if those levels were altered in diabetic and non-diabetic mice,” she said. He project is titled “Optimized Western blotting allows for detection of Glutathione S-Transferase Mu 1 levels in hearts from type I diabetic Akita mice and wild-type mice.”
Overall, Wang said her time spent in the Young Scholars Program “was a great way to get hands-on experience in the lab while living in the dorms and getting a college experience.”
Serena Wang, Grade 12
“I have always been curious and eager to try new things,” said senior Serena Wang of her project, “Coronary Artery Calcification and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in South Asians.” “This project mainly required me to develop my abilities to do statistical analysis, which I had never focused on before.”
Wang drew on her background in computer science to analyze data she had gathered about cardiovascular disease. “Heart disease is a common illness, and I wanted to improve current methods of predicting cardiovascular disease risk,” she said.
Mentored by Ashish Mathur of the South Asian Heart Center at El Camino Hospital, Wang utilized the resources made available to her to identify a specific area of study. “I wish to find a better way to determine cardiovascular disease risk for the South Asian population, which suffers from a significantly higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease than other ethnicities,” she said.
The skills Wang learned at Harker were key to helping her gain a greater understanding of the topic. “After learning so much at school, I am finally able to use the theoretical concepts I learned in school to do novel research,” she said. “The potential effects of my results could help the South Asian Heart Center better predict cardiovascular disease risk and thus more effectively prevent development of the disease.”
Wang’s research gave her the opportunity to pick up new skills, including the use of statistical analysis software. “With such specific syntax and so many different commands, the software was challenging to learn to use efficiently, but now I am experienced enough to even teach a new student researcher how to use the application.”
Samyukta Yagati, Grade 12
During her freshman year, Samyukta Yagati, who has been doing research projects since grade 7, became interested in computer science, a subject she has pursued actively ever since. “Research is a lot of fun for me,” she said. “I enjoy the process, the discovery, the challenge, applying things I’ve learned in class to real-life problems.”
Her project, “Optimizing Segmentation Performance to Improve Diagnosis of Breast Lesions,” gave her the opportunity to explore both computer science and biology, a topic she had recently become enamored with. “I have loved computer science since freshman year, and I’ve been interested in bio. That interest intensified after bio in junior year,” she recalled.
In her research, Yagati hoped to improve an algorithm that is used to diagnose patients with breast lesions. “Improving the results/increasing automation of the process can really help effectiveness and usability of the program in clinics, hopefully improving patient experience and treatment,” she said.
While researching for the project, Yagati learned some interesting things about medical research: “Knowing information as simple as whether the edge of a lesion … is spiky or not can give doctors a lot of information about malignancy!”
Michael Zhao, Grade 11
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, perhaps better known by the acronym ALS and the nickname Lou Gehrig’s disease, received a lot of attention this past summer due to the craze created by the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Junior Michael Zhao’s own research began after he read numerous articles on the topic. “Especially over the summer, with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, I felt like my research had a tangible impact and made the experience more interesting,” he said.
Zhao’s project, “A Yeast Functional Screen Elucidates Potential Mechanisms of C9ORF72 RAN Protein Toxicity in ALS Pathogenesis,” involved searching for genetic modifiers for RAN proteins. “RAN proteins, the focus of my research, were first identified in 2011,” he said. “Yet, three years later, we still know very little about the underlying mechanisms of RAN protein toxicity.”
Zhao worked with a mentor that he said was extremely helpful. “My mentor has taught me many techniques to perform experiments, he said. “Furthermore, he offered me an experience I could never have hoped to obtain elsewhere.” Working in a university lab was also a new and exciting experience, which offered many learning opportunities.
In addition, he received a lot of help from Harker science teachers in refining his project. “In particular, they were very helpful in reading over my paper and giving me feedback,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Every year, dozens of Harker’s upper school students submit projects to the Intel Science Talent Search and Siemens Competition. These projects, often created during summer internships at university science labs, are the result of months of research, writing and refinement. This feature highlights just a fraction of the amazing work being performed by Harker students every year. To read more about the projects on page 29, please go to our Science Projects 2014 section in Harker News, or search “perseverance.”
Roshni Pankhaniya Grade 12
For her project, “Analyzing First-Trimester MicroRNA as a Marker for Assessing Adverse Pregnancy Risk,” senior Roshni Pankhaniya researched at Stanford University’s Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC). She was especially interested in immunology. “When looking for an area of research, I focused on finding professors targeting specific disorders/diseases,” she said. Her mentors, Xuhuai Ji and Holden T. Maecker, “helped me come up with the basic experimental design of the project and advised me on how to conduct the data analysis.”
Pankhaniya found her research internship by searching for projects that she found interesting and contacting the professors working on them. “I chose to work on this specific project because preeclampsia is a reproductive condition faced by approximately 8 percent of women worldwide, is the leading cause of maternal mortality and could not be detected prior to 10 weeks gestation, the latest time period for preventative therapy,” she said. Her goal was to come up with a way of detecting preeclampsia before 10 weeks gestation in order to find ways to treat it and thus lower the number of maternal deaths.
“It was great being able to work with experts in the field in such an advanced technical setting,” Pankhaniya said. “In addition to doing research, I was able to attend lectures given by Stanford and visiting professors, as well as talk to other professors in the department about their research.”
Despite being a high school student, Pankhaniya found the staff at HIMC to be welcoming and respectful. “It was amazing how eagerly they welcomed a high school student into the lab and never for a moment did I feel that I was ‘just’ a high school student, but rather was a member of the team,” she recalled.
Among her most exciting moments during her research was discovering with the team that “we could use maternal cell MicroRNA to detect risk for preeclampsia prior to 10 weeks gestation. Our findings are really interesting in that they suggest that maternal cell MicroRNA plays a greater role in fetal development than placental cell MicroRNA. We will look to understand why that is so in the future.
“Overall,” Panhkaniya said, “this was one of the most fulfilling and most memorable experiences of high school due to interactions I was able to have with experts in the field and the research experience I gained.”
David Lin Grade 12
Senior David Lin turned to cosmology for his project, “Physical Properties and Evolution of Gravitationally Bound Halo Structures in Cosmological Dark Matter Simulations.”
“I chose this area of research since it was an interesting intersection of physics, computer science and astronomy,” Lin said. His project concerned the characteristics of dark matter halos, which play a key role in the formation of galaxies. “This knowledge will be useful in predicting how dark matter behaves in nonvirialized regions of space and will supplement existing galaxy formation theories.”
Lin was in good company during his time researching at the University of California, Santa Cruz, being mentored by Dr. Joel Primack and postdoctoral researcher Miguel Rocha. “One of the most exciting parts of my research was being able to work under such accomplished faculty,” he said. “For instance, [Primack] pioneered the famous LCDM Theory, which explains how the universe evolved after the Big Bang.”
Harker faculty, including upper school science teachers Chris Spenner and Anita Chetty, were instrumental in helping Lin find the right opportunity. “Many of the faculty like Mr. Spenner and Ms. Chetty helped me find my internship opportunity and helped edit my research paper afterward,” he said.
One of the most interesting parts of Lin’s research was how the team measured dark matter. “Most matter in the universe is composed of dark matter, which doesn’t interact with light and is therefore difficult to measure,” he said. “As such, we use computer simulations to model this matter to find how the universe evolves over time.”
Cindy Liu Grade 12
Cindy Liu, grade 12, enjoyed the work she was doing in science classes, so a research internship seemed like a natural next step. “I’ve always liked doing labs and reading articles in science classes, and I thought research would be a good way to learn more about a particular topic in a different way, not just through textbooks and lectures,” she said.
For her project, “Characterizing Novel Binders as Tools for Understanding Chloride Transport Mechanisms,” she researched at Stanford University’s molecular and cellular physiology department as well as under the Stanford Institutes of Medicine Summer Research (SIMR) program.
Because she enjoyed learning about the workings of the human body and cellular function, the program was a good fit. “I’m also considering pursuing medicine or biomedical engineering in the future, so this project seemed like a good way to test my interest in these areas,” she said.
Her research involved two proteins that were potential inhibitors of CLC, “a chloride-proton antiporter that moves chloride and protons across membranes,” Liu said. “If they are shown to bind to and inhibit CLC, they can be further characterized in order to help gain greater understanding of CLC structure and function.”
Liu found the experience to be rewarding, with some neat surprises. “This was my first time doing actual wet lab research, so I loved being able to set up the experiments and collect the raw data myself instead of just analyzing someone else’s data,” she said. “Also, since my project was part of a larger program for high school students, I got to meet other students with similar interests and listen to various presentations from graduate students, doctors and researchers – even a Nobel Prize winner!”
The resources and support Liu found at Harker proved invaluable in helping her discover this opportunity. “Harker has provided so many resources, from general information on various research opportunities to internships students can apply for directly through Harker,” she said. “Harker research and science teachers are also very supportive of students’ research ideas and goals.”
Liu would like to continue her studies in this field, but said she is keeping an open mind. “I hope to do science research in college, especially in molecular and cellular physiology if I get the chance. But I’m also open to exploring and learning about other fields as well!”
Rahul Balakrishnan Grade 12
Senior Rahul Balakrishnan’s interest in computer science led him to the Science Internship Program (SIP) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied astronomy with mentor Angie Wolfgang, a graduate student. “I choose the astronomy field since it focuses on a broader application of computer science. I wanted to see programming at work outside of an office setting,” said Balakrishnan.
After seeing several Harker students complete successful internships at UC Santa Cruz, Balakrishnan began his own internship there after being alerted to the opportunity by science chair Anita Chetty. He found himself working in the university’s multi-disciplinary building, which was aptly named. “The research in this building was truly multidisciplinary, with a slight emphasis toward astronomy,” he said. “Not only did every floor sport a different field of science, but also I worked in the same room as other interns from the same program who were exploring projects related to cancer cells and marine animals.”
The overall atmosphere in the building was one of collaboration, with students helping one another in various ways. “Although we couldn’t collaborate in the specifics of each other’s projects, we aided each other through more general forms, such as coding, formatting spreadsheets and making PowerPoint presentations,” Balakrishnan said.
Balakrishnan’s project, “Designing a Spectroscopy Based Software to Produce Spectra of Kepler’s Binary Host Stars,” involved finding a way to identify binary stars. “We hoped to create a new system to confirm that two stars were binary stars, or gravitationally bound in some way.”
Collecting the data was one of the more fascinating parts of Balakrishnan’s internship. “I went to Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton to see how my mentor collected the pictures that I would analyze,” he recalled. “The process involved using a giant laser that shot a light into the clouds to simulate a star.
“Our program can turn an image of a star from a spectrometer into a fully developed spectral graph,” he added. “Although the project was hundreds of lines of code long, the most complex data structure I used was a two-dimensional list.”
Although he doesn’t plan to continue studying astronomy, the overall experience did enhance his applicable knowledge of computer science. “I will almost certainly use my acquired programming knowledge in future coding projects and college classes,” he said.
Neil Movva Grade 12
In an effort to explore the processes by which the body heals itself, senior Neil Movva studied under Dr. Jill Helms at the Hagey Lab for Reconstructive Surgery at Stanford University. The eventual result was his research project, “Force Responsive Reconstruction: Characterizing the Morphogenesis of the Periodontal Ligament through Biomechanical and Histological Analysis.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by the body’s self-healing processes, and have done previous research on wound healing, tissue reconstruction and biomaterials,” Movva said. “Studying the reconstruction of ligaments is vital to furthering our understanding of how the human body adapts to changing physical conditions, and is especially relevant in the context of modern society’s growing senior population that will experience ligament wear and degeneration.”
In his research, Movva helped reignite a field that he believed had gone stagnant. “I employed advanced, novel techniques to identify and then demonstrate our new hypothesis regarding collagen fiber reconstruction at the cellular level,” he said, “bringing a new, data-backed viewpoint to the field after more than 50 years of stagnation.”
Helms “has been incredibly generous in sharing her knowledge and offering guidance as I learned the ropes of professional research,” he added.
He also found help among Harker’s science faculty, both in finding opportunities and refining his work. “Mr. Chris Spenner has fostered my interest in science research for the past three years, and graciously wrote recommendation letters to land me a position at Helms’ lab,” Movva said. “After I came back to school, Ms. Chetty patiently reviewed and edited my paper, while Mr. Spenner again lent his expertise to answer my questions as they popped up.”
One of the most exciting aspects of Movva’s work was the possibility of creating incredibly accurate computer models that can greatly assist doctors. “With the biologically corroborated framework I documented,” he said, “doctors may soon be able to perform rapid computer modeling of joints and other bony structures to determine the precisely optimal solution before beginning any invasive procedures.”
He also enjoyed seeing his work visualized through state-of-the- art technology. “A large part of my project focused on biomechanical computer-assisted modeling, and it’s hard to beat the excitement of seeing the first solution, visualized as a mesmerizing 3-D heatmap, after weeks of model construction and optimization,” he explained.
Karen Tu Grade 11
Although she had been interested in biology for some time, junior Karen Tu decided to embark on an internship to “get a better idea of what biological/wet lab research was like.”
She ended up at the pathology department at Stanford University, where she and a partner were mentored by graduate student Andrew Huh. “He basically taught us everything from basic biology to dissection techniques for our project,” Tu said.
While admitting that she “didn’t really have a specific interest in genetics or neurodegenerative diseases before my internship,” Tu developed an interest in the topic while researching for her project, “A Novel Tool for Monitoring Mitochondrial Calcium Dynamics in Dopaminergic Neurons.”
“I think that neurological diseases are really interesting because even a small change in the concentration of a certain substance in your brain could have drastic effects,” she said. “It’s really hard for doctors to diagnose and treat these diseases, so this field of research is also really important for improving our understanding of these diseases.”
Tu’s project was to develop [research that] may be used to test treatments for Parkinson’s disease. “In our project, we needed to find a single white-eyed fly from our entire stock,” she said. “This fly indicated that our project had succeeded, so we were really excited when we finally found it.”
Her colleagues also made her feel welcome and included. “Our lab had monthly lab meetings, where everyone would come down from their various rooms and discuss their research and the problems they encountered together,” Tu said. “The PI (principal investigator) whom I worked with and visiting researchers from other universities gave lectures, which were a highlight of the summer.”
One of the more fascinating things she learned during the course of her research, she said, was the stunning variety of fruit flies. “Before I started this project, I had no idea that fruit flies could have so many different physical variations,” she said. “There’s an entire spectrum of eye colors, wing shapes and other random appendages that they can develop.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Students, parents and teachers agree that the area affectionately known as “the farm” at Harker Preschool is a very special place. This spacious, tree-shaded area on the Union campus enables the children to spend quality time in nature.
The preschoolers take pride in maintaining the farm, which is home to two adorable rabbits and boasts a garden filled with vegetables, herbs and fruit. In the farm’s center is a circle of tree stumps, providing the perfect outdoor classroom. During visits to the farm, students engage in such activities as rabbit feeding, gardening, water pumping, leaf raking and sweeping.
The farm is supervised by the preschool’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) specialist, Robyn Stone, who is also a science/math instructor for the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension. Stone explained that the farm is regularly used by all the students, from the 3- and 4-year-olds in the cottage classrooms to the older children in transitional kindergarten (TK).
“Farm work enables the children to see their own impact on the environment,” said Stone, noting that some examples of learning by doing include the children saving vegan lunch scraps to feed to the rabbits and worms, helping them grow.
“Our newest cool thing is a piece of technology: a pump that enables the students to draw water from a well for the garden, helping them understand that water is precious and not to be wasted in a time of drought,” Stone noted.
The children notice change and make observations about size color, texture and quantity as the plants grow from sprout to flower to fruit, explained Stone. “It is my hope that, in seeing, touching, smelling and tasting the results of their work, the students will develop respect and reverence for nature,” she said.
While all the preschool classrooms have frequent opportunities to use the farm with their teachers, Stone added that her STEM lab makes further use of the area for specific hands-on science lessons. For example, chickens were incubated in the STEM lab. Now the children are enjoying watching the chickens change and grow on the farm.
Stone believes that having both chickens and rabbits onsite provides youngsters with opportunities for learning responsibility and empathy through animal care. Indeed, taking care of the farm’s bunnies has already proven to be a huge hit for both the cottage and TK students.
Three-year-old Charlie Kalko said he likes to “put carrots in the bunny cage nice and gently.”
His classmate, 3-year-old Aila El-Charif, added that during a recent visit to the farm she “ate tomatoes and snap peas and pet the bunny and rode a (pretend) pony.”
Meanwhile, 5-year-old Avi Gupta said he enjoys outings to the farm because “I like the rabbits.”
“Whether as part of an outing during STEM time or during a routine visit with their classroom teachers, all of the preschoolers look forward to spending time on the farm,” said Andrea Hart, director of Harker Preschool.
In addition to the STEM lab, other specialty classes include art studio, music and movement, and library. All of the classes are rich with activity centers and educational materials, offering a balance between child-directed exploratory learning and teacher-directed activities.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In October, more than 8,000 visitors poured into the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona. For the week of Oct. 8, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing was the biggest show in town. Scientists, engineers, college students and faculty came from around the globe. An overwhelming majority of the attendees were female. As a rare high-school participant chosen for my research, I was honored to be a part of this intellectual mix.
For three days, the convention center was abuzz with activity. While the daylight hours were filled with informational and inspiring talks, evenings mixed in “mocktails” and entertainment. The conference was kicked off by Shafi Goldwasser’s keynote address. An electric engineering and computer science professor at MIT, Goldwasser is the world’s leading researcher in cryptography, working on privacy issues in our uber-connected world. She was followed by other luminaries from the computing world: Yoky Matsuoka from Nest Labs, Linda Northrop from the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, Lori Mackenzie from Stanford University, and many others.
Personally, I thought this was two conferences in one. While much of the time was focused on how women are shaping modern technology, there was also a serious discussion around the role of society in shaping young girls, especially when it comes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Ruthe Farmer, director of the National Center for Women & IT, spoke on the importance of getting girls interested in science at a young age. While some of us at Harker may not realize the problem, I agree with her when she argues that there is a significant STEM gender gap.
Megan Smith, CTO of the United States, was a surprise speaker. She reports to the president himself, and she talked about her role in the government in helping reverse this gender gap tide. Deborah Estrin from Cornell University commented that women should be “forming science circles instead of coffee groups.”
Interestingly, a casual on-stage conversation between Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, garnered the most press. In response to a question around salary discrepancies between men and women, Nadella was “inarticulate” (as he himself later admitted), inadvertently implying that women should not be asking for raises and instead wait for “good karma” to play out. Many people in the audience, including me, were alarmed at his response.
Ironically, the ensuing media firestorm may have actually helped the cause. The dialogue went national, and certainly helped in increasing awareness around the disparities between men and women in the industry.
Beyond the engaging sessions, a personal highlight was the poster session. Over the last year, I have been working on research in data science. It was an honor to share my work at such a prominent venue. Hundreds of people stopped by to see my poster. They listened to my pitch. Some even hugged me and encouraged me. My project involved mining online thyroid cancer forums. My effort came about when a loved one was diagnosed with the disease. I found myself spending countless hours online, reading hundreds of “threads” and looking for answers. While these forums are valuable sources of data, searching them isn’t always simple. It was then that the thought of extracting “word-of-mouth” patient experiences came to me. By applying natural language processing techniques – part-of-speech tagging, topic modeling and association rules – I was able to develop models for discussion topics and thread summaries. I also laid the groundwork for discovering and correlating symptoms and treatments. My project ended up being a first-of-a- kind effort at mining such insights from free-form medical forums, making the data valuable to patients and health care professionals alike.
After three productive days, the conference came to an end. On my flight back, I went through my collection of more than 100 business cards, and remembered meeting my new friends, all of whom shared my passion for computing. While it’s true that women are severely underrepresented in STEM, and that females make up less than 20 percent of enrollees in our engineering colleges, I sense that a revolution is underway. It won’t be long before we turn this tide. I left the event inspired to double-down on my own dreams in the field of computer science. Rejuvenated by the energy, I am also committed to bringing more females into STEM.
I can’t wait for the conference registration to open next year. I hope some of you will join me there!
Earlier this week, Rajiv Movva, grade 9, was announced as a first-place mathematics award winner in the Broadcom MASTERS competition, the finals of which took place in Washington, D.C. Movva’s project, which focused on discovering a natural method for treating type 2 diabetes, earned him a $3,500 prize, to be put toward a summer STEM experience of his choice, and an Apple iPad. “It was really an amazing experience to meet all the other finalists and compete with them,” Movva said. The prizes from the contest were not the only rewards received by the finalists. “All finalists also had a minor planet that was discovered by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named after them, and they also announced that finalists’ teachers would get their own minor planet as well!”
Another big highlight was meeting President Barack Obama at the White House. “Obviously, meeting the President was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we were all very excited to have,” Movva reminisced. “That being said, Broadcom MASTERS finals week as a whole was an experience too great to be justly described by words.”
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Oct. 21, 2014:
Freshman Rajiv Movva was recently named a finalist in the Broadcom MASTERS competition and will be headed to Washington D.C. on Oct. 24 for the national stage of the competition, where . “I look forward to meeting and competing with the other students who share similar interests as me!” Movva said. The national winners will be announced on Tues., Oct. 28.
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Five Harker students – the most from any school in California – are among the 300 national semifinalists in the 2014 Broadcom MASTERS program, a science and engineering competition for middle school students sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation and the Society for Science & the Public. Michael Kwan, Rajiv Movva, Anooshree Sengupta and Shaya Zarkesh, all grade 9, and Kaushik Shivakumar, grade 8, completed and submitted their projects during the 2013-14 school year; their projects were chosen from more than 6,000 nominees nationwide.
On Sept. 17, the 30 national finalists will be named. Finalists will be eligible to travel to Washington, D.C., for the final competition; the winner will receive a $25,000 prize from the Samueli Foundation.
During a special assembly on Oct. 19, upper school students heard from three representatives of The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). Based at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, CNS aims to prevent weapons of mass destruction from spreading by educating young people on issues of nonproliferation.
At the beginning of the assembly, Diana Nichols, former head of school and member of the Harker Board of Trustees, announced a new partnership with CNS and introduced CNS researcher and project manager Masako Toki. After giving a brief rundown of CNS and its goals, Toki told students about the center’s Critical Issues Forum (CIF), a program that enables high school students from around the world to come together to discuss and present research on nonproliferation topics. Next year’s CIF Student Conference will be held in Hiroshima, Japan, where the first of two atomic bombs was dropped in 1945 to hasten the end of World War II.
Another speaker was Tom Greg, a CNS graduate and researcher who served in the U.S. Navy on a nuclear submarine and held a crucial role in the decision to launch nuclear missiles. He recounted the story of his visit to Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum, which he called “one of the most intense experiences of my life.” He later decided to devote his graduate studies to researching nuclear nonproliferation.
The final speaker was Avner Cohen, senior fellow and professor at CNS, who spoke about the history of the nuclear age, including the discovery of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which had been hidden for many years. Cohen showed a video that recapped the advent of nuclear weapons, from the earliest threat of their potential use by the Nazis to the arms race that helped drive the Cold War.
Recently, a group of Harker students began working with computer science department chair Eric Nelson on nonproliferation studies. The students plan to research a topic yet to be chosen and present at the conference in Hiroshima.
“I see a future of going into politics or political science, and I’m also on the debate team, so it seemed like a topic that would be of interest to me,” said Zarek Drozda, grade 11, one of the students working with Nelson. “Certainly I’ve heard about nuclear problems through debate and such, so I think kind of doing debate awakened me to these issues and I found an interest in it.”
“We’re just every week trying to find different topics to cover that will take us in the right direction once the project gets started,” said Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari, grade 12, who discovered the topic through his interest in physics. “I’m really interested in physics and so I’ve been talking to Dr. Nelson about just nuclear weapons in general for the past year or so. He brought to my attention this project and I liked the politics part of it as well.”
The 2014 Siemens Competition Math : Science : Technology semifinalists were just announced and 408 national semifinalists and 97 regional finalists were named. This year 13 students from The Harker School were among the 60 California semifinalists, representing 22 percent of the statewide total. In addition, four of those students were among the 15 named regional finalists, representing 27 percent of the regional total. More Harker students were named in both categories than any other school in California. Congratulations to the students and faculty for this outstanding achievement.
Harker’s regional finalists and their projects are:
Jason Chu, grade 12: “Studying the Nature of Dwarf Elliptical Nuclei and Globular Clusters”
Vineet Kosaraju, grade 11: “Designing Tertiary Structures with RNA Motifs in Order to Optimize 3-Dimensional RNA Folds in a Massive Open Laboratory”
Jonathan Ma and Sadhika Malladi, both grade 11: “Systematic Rational Identification of Sex-Linked Molecular Alterations and Therapies in Cancer”
These four students have each earned a $1,000 scholarship and will move on to the regional competition, held next month at the California Institute of Technology, for a chance to appear at the national finals in Washington, D.C., in December, where students will compete for up to $100,000 in scholarship prizes.
This year’s other semifinalists are:
Andrew Jin, grade 12 (“A Machine Learning Framework to Identify Selected Variants in Regions of Recent Adaptation”)
Nitya Mani, grade 12 (“Characterizing the n-Division Points of Genus-0 Curves through Straightedge and Compass Constructions”)
Neil Movva, grade 12 (“How Do Teeth Grow? Characterizing the Morphogenesis of the Periodontal Ligament through Complementary Biomechanical and Histological Analysis”)
Roshni Pankhaniya, grade 12 (“Analyzing first-Trimester MicroRNA as a Marker for Assessing Adverse Pregnancy Risk”)
Ankita Pannu, grade 12 (“Mining Online Cancer Support Groups: Improving Healthcare through Social Data”)
Nikash Shankar, grade 12 (“A Potential Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease: Encapsulation of Curcumin within Polymeric PLGA-PEG Nanoparticles Protects Neuro2A Cells from Beta-Amyloid Induced Cytotoxicity and Improves Bioavailability”)
Alice Wu, grade 11 (“Kinematic Anomalies in the Rotation Curves of Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies”)
Rishabh Chandra, grade 11, and Venkat Sankar, grade 10 (“Managing the Impact of Infrastructure Projects on Endangered Species: A Stochastic Simulation Approach Based on Population Viability Analysis”)
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
These days, it seems, there is an app for just about everything, and young app developers have become one of the fastest-growing groups of technological inventors. Often working from home with little or no overhead, using free or low-cost app development tools, creative app makers are attracting the attention of technology companies and users worldwide.
With cell phones practically an extension of our bodies, useful mobile apps have the power to directly affect and improve the quality of everyday life. Indeed, app invention is fast becoming part and parcel of the digital revolution and widely being incorporated into computer science education curricula as the demand for fun, easy to use, new apps grows.
This is music to the ears of several Harker alumni, who have launched, or are about to launch, innovative new apps. Meet app designers Neeraj Baid ’13, Govi Dasu ’12, Daanish Jamal ’12 and his business partner, Adhir Ravipati ’05.
Giftbook: A Mobile Wallet that Stores Gift Cards
Before designing his latest app, called giftbook, developer Neeraj Baid ’13 had a vision: that no one should have to carry or lose plastic gift cards again. That desire led to the creation of giftbook (https://gftbk.herokuapp.com/), Baid’s fourth app for iOS (a mobile operating system developed by Apple for use with their iDevices), which stores gift cards in a centralized location.
“Giftbook is an app that makes spending and keeping track of your gift cards easy,” Baid said. “You can save cards from any retailer on your iPhone so you never worry about forgetting one at home,” he added.
The app, which is now available at Apple’s app store as a mobile gift card wallet, already has received overwhelmingly positive customer reviews. However, Baid is planning a design overhaul and a major update in mid- October that will enable users to purchase and send gifts through giftbook.
“I build features as they come up. For a major update like the one coming up, I’m often working the equivalent of a full-time job to ensure it’s ready by October. There’s also a fair amount of non-technical work involved, such as working with partners to allow me to sell gift cards in giftbook,” Baid explained.
In addition to his work as founder of giftbook, Baid also attends the University of California, Berkeley, where he is getting a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Additionally, he worked as an iOS intern at Venmo, a company that provides a free, friend-to-friend, mobile payment platform app.
Among giftbook’s features is one that lets users know when they are near a retailer with a relevant gift card (with directions to closest locations); the card simply appears on the phone’s lock screen with easy accessibility. The app also uses a standardized approach to displaying barcodes, so gift cards are accepted by all retailers. To ensure security, sensitive gift card data (such as serial numbers and pins) are never stored on a server.
The apps Baid created prior to giftbook are Take Me Away, SpeakToSnap and a URL shortener for Google. Take Me Away allows users to travel the world from their iPhones by tapping a location button for any global destination, where they can view photos taken by real people, among other features. SpeakToSnap is a voice-activated camera, while the URL shortener allows users to quickly and simply shorten long and unwieldy URLs, using Google’s goo.gl shortening service.
Baid’s first app, SpeakToSnap, came about after taking the Global Online Academy iOS class offered at Harker during the spring of his senior year. “Harker really helped lay a critical computer science foundation,” he recalled.
“Every app I have built comes out of necessity for something I want in my own life,” he said. “For example, I built giftbook after graduating from high school. I needed a way to manage the huge number of gifts I received from graduation parties and already had from before. I’ve found that working on something you personally want is the best way to remain dedicated and complete it at the highest quality possible.”
The best way to learn iOS development, he advised, is simply by doing it. “Your first app won’t be your best – and it shouldn’t be. You’ll learn a lot from building something silly like a URL shortener, and that knowledge will be invaluable as you build your next apps. There are incredible iOS resource tutorials available online and pre-made app components,” he noted.
Learning Dollars: A Pilot Project Designed to Help English Learners in Developing Countries Land Jobs
Govi Dasu ’12 recently returned from a trip to India, where he spent his summer doing background research for an app he is designing, now in the pilot stage, called Learning Dollars. The socially conscious app aims to help individuals in developing countries improve their economic situation by landing higher paying jobs.
Dasu said he plans to accomplish this by first helping users to learn English and then connecting them with helpful resources to find better employment. The higher paying jobs in developing countries include vocations such as hotel workers, airport employees, cashiers, clerks and call center staff – all of which require English language mastery.
While in India, Dasu worked exhaustively on an experiment to see whether Rosetta Stone (a $400 software program) could teach English to someone unable to speak the language.
In doing so, he noted the ways the software could be made more comprehensive and effective for users in the developing world. One of his test users was a middle-aged cook named Geeta, who dropped out of school after second grade and does not know how to read any language (but can speak two). Extensively working with her helped Dasu gain an understanding of what kind of education technology works in developing countries, especially with people who are illiterate and (like Geeta) may not have used a computer before.
Before conducting his work abroad, Dasu believed that, if successful, “a free smartphone app that uses Rosetta Stone’s method might be able to help people in the developing world to learn English in order to gain access to higher paying jobs and higher education.”
While he walked away from India with mixed feelings about the viability of the Rosetta Stone program, it did not deter him from moving forward with work on his own app. Indeed, the testing process allowed him to note ways in which the software could be improved for users in the developing world. He said he came up with the name, Learning Dollars, because it has “learning” in it (i.e., learning English) but at the same time, it sounds like “earning” (as in earning dollars). He said he hopes to get a minimum viable product (MVP) out in the coming month. The program uses a Google app engine setup and coincides with his goal to dedicate his life to fighting poverty, promoting democracy and protecting freedom.
“Often the dollar – which besides being the U.S. currency, is the international reserve currency – is associated with a strong purchasing power in many developing countries,” said Dasu, who recently graduated (after just two years) from Stanford University.
During his years at Harker, he participated in many extracurricular activities, including serving as the school’s ASB vice president.
NextSpot: A Mobile App for Fluid Group Events
When Daanish Jamal ’12 and Adhir Ravipati ’05 partnered to create NextSpot, a mobile app that helps coordinate everyday meet-ups, they wanted to create something that they and their peers would find useful in their own lives.
Now available in Apple’s app store, NextSpot streamlines the details of such things as grabbing lunch between classes, catching a movie at the end of the week, enjoying a day at the beach, playing a game of basketball or planning a night on the town. It is integrated with Yelp and saves past favorite meeting spots, among other features.
“Say you’re a college student, trying to get 20-25 friends over for a party. What we’ve learned is that you’re not going to create a Facebook event (or Evite or Eventbrite) because that sets too formal a tone. On the other hand, messaging/group messaging is casual but too unorganized. NextSpot fits this use case – casual, organized events,” Jamal explained.
“We released a beta this past spring to select fraternities and sororities at Georgetown, USC, Stanford, Oregon and UC Santa Barbara. The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive, and we are gearing up for our launch in a few weeks as well as raising our next round of funding,” added Ravipati.
Generally, it takes at least a few months to develop an MVP with the core functions of an app, Jamal and Ravipati agreed. After releasing an MVP, it becomes a quicker process developing the product based on user feedback.
Presently the talented duo are devoting themselves full-time to working on NextSpot. Jamal has taken a leave of absence from Georgetown University and Ravipati left his previous startup earlier this year to focus on launching the app.
They believe that their time at Harker helped pave the way for their current perseverance. “Harker has a great track record of occupational and entrepreneurial success amongst its graduates. I don’t know if it can be narrowed down to one or two things, but rather developing a problem- solving mindset that challenges you to look at problems differently,” said Ravipati.
This article was originally published in the fall 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In late July, 10 upper school students embarked on a summer research trip to Costa Rica, where they had the unique opportunity to perform field research with working scientists and experience the country’s lush beauty.
After spending a relaxing first day in the Costa Rican capital city of San José, the group departed for the La Cusinga Lodge in Uvita. While walking on the beach, the students also were fortunate enough to observe a sea turtle laying her eggs. “They got to observe the entire process up close and we were able to get back to the lodge by 10 p.m.,” said upper school chemistry teacher and trip chaperone Smriti Koodanjeri.
The next day was packed with thrills, as the students went river and ocean kayaking before jumping into the water with snorkeling equipment. “We did more kayaking after the swim and also learned how to find, shuck and open coconuts with only a large stick and a rock,” Koodanjeri said. That evening, the students attended a lecture about how geographic information systems (GIS) are used to keep tabs on marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.
Over the next few days, the students worked on their research projects at Cabo Blanco Natural Reserve and the Monteverde Institute. At Cabo Blanco, the students went on a guided snorkeling exhibition and took part in a field research exercises, where they collected and identified shells and used the data collected to estimate the number of snail species in the area. “The controlled collection and analysis took most of the afternoon and was an excellent introduction into drawing quantitative conclusions even with a limited data set,” Koodanjeri said.
At the Monteverde Institute, the students analyzed the data they had gathered at Cabo Blanco and used it to create research projects that they later presented at a small conference. For their hard work, the students each received a certificate from the University of Georgia, which has a campus in Monteverde.
On their final night, the students went hiking through the Tirimbina rainforest.